Big changes. Merry-Go-Rounds. And surrendering.

For 7 years, I have worked for the same non-profit, ensuring children have mentors in their life. A noble cause and intrinsically satisfying. Most of the time.

Huh? How can making sure kids have good people in their life not feel good Annie? Good question.

The role I played within the agency required multiple hats, and that can be exhausting. Facilitating, writing grants, fostering relationships, marketing, recruiting, budgeting, managing people, creating new programs, collaborating, meetings, meetings, meetings.

Jumping from one hat to another, achieving, succeeding, repeat. It can be a merry-go-round of constant to-do lists.

Slowly, it was chipping away at my soul and taking me away from my creativity and unique gifts and talents I want to share with the world. And I allowed it to happen.

I was striving instead of thriving.

One of my favorite mentors, Marie Forleo, taught me this:

‘Everything is figure-outable.’

When you have that as a motto, along with core desired feelings, well, you no longer settle. The merry-go-round ride used to excite me. Now it was only making me nauseous.

When you choose to make feeling good, your soul’s purpose, our intuition becomes stronger, and the little voice inside you whispers or shouts until you listen.

Mine was shouting. Loud and clear. Make space for your future Annie.

I took some time to sit with this and determined that leaving was NOT what would make me feel better. I listened. Intentively. And I realized I had more work to do with the agency.

So where is the happy medium?

How could I keep doing the work for the children in my community, AND honor my calling for more creativity, connections and spiritual work?

Authentic conversations to honor those authentic relationships I had worked so hard to build over the 7 years.

As scary as it was, I said it straight up to the people that needed to hear it. I’m not happy. And I want to do something about it.

And we did!

I have fewer hats to wear now. More time for my own creative projects. And I FEEL, deep down, that I made the right decision.

Now, I have my core desired feelings, I believe that everything is figure-outable, and I trust that the Universe has my back. (And when I didn’t, I called a friend:).

However, I still had fear show up. Anxiety. The unknown almost paralyzed me in a mindset that held me back from making this big change.

I had almost forgotten an important piece in making BIG changes – surrender. Surrendering the outcome, that end result that we sometimes visualize and grasp so tight our arms can hurt.

Surrender is an integral part of trusting that the Universe has your back, allowing changes to occur in a state of flow.

The process took a lot of work. Breathing. Journaling. Forgiveness. Yoga. Meditating. More authentic conversations. Tears. Questioning. But it was all worth it.

The day I am writing this, is the first day of that BIG change! And I am doing exactly what I love. Sharing what I know with you. Raising the vibe of the Universe, one email, one interaction, one workshop at a time!!!